Pudge starts calling the house nearly every day, outside of Mom’s work hours. One day he hints that the museum is about to go under, and that her job will be at risk unless she takes responsibility for raising a big heap of money from the members. Mom talks to him from the kitchen for half an hour, pleading and arguing, but never in the taking-charge voice she uses on most people.
“If it’s phone work, I’ll do it,” she says. “If it’s e-mail, I’ll do it. Tell me what I can do right now, Pudge. Tell me what I can do from home, without going in. I can get a laptop. Working from home, I can spend unlimited hours on the phone, and I will get you that money.”
“It’s extortion,” she says when she hangs up. “He’s actually threatening to fire me.”
“Why don’t you go in, Adele?” Dad says. “Go in in the mornings once in a while. I can take care of myself.”
“What would you do by yourself in the morning?” Mom asks him.
“Read the newspaper, watch TV, listen to the news…”
“The news is so depressing, though,” Mom says.
“I could always call Marty if I need someone to talk to.”
“That’s an idea. In fact, why don’t we see if Marty is willing to come over a few mornings a week while I go in to work?”
And so our daily pattern begins to shift. Mom will go into the office from ten to noon a few days a week, as well as working three hours a day in the afternoon. Because Marty’s bar/restaurant mostly needs him in the evenings, he can come by mornings most of the time. Dad will also stay home alone for an hour here or there, with the understanding that he will call Mom or Marty if he becomes agitated or needs company.
The first morning that Dad is to spend some time by himself, I see him rubbing his hands a little. Not in the old automatic, repetitive way, but more of a light buffing for good luck. It seems that he could use a booster, a dose of the old empowering phrases we used when he was really sick. But as of this moment we’ve dropped all the old techniques and are relying entirely on shock treatments to make Dad better. So, technically, I shouldn’t do this anymore. Since Mom is just a few feet away gathering the museum’s financial records, I decide to come at it indirectly.
“You know, Dad,” I begin, “everything is for the good.”
“Everything is for the good? What in the world do you mean?”
“That everything is for the best. Ultimately. In the universe. It all works out, you know. Like a kind of perfection. Even your having been sick, I guess. Maybe some good will eventually come of it. It all happens for a reason, as part of some massively perfect scheme.”
“You know, you can’t believe everything you hear, son. The fact that someone said something and it sounded catchy doesn’t mean it’s true.”
“What are you two talking about?” Mom says, putting a ledger book in her briefcase.
With one finger, Dad pushes Mom’s glasses farther up her nose. “Whether the universe is moving toward perfection. Which in your case it clearly is.”
“Well!” Mom says. “That’s so sweet.” Mom actually blushes, and I sort of want to leave the room. From what I can tell, this is the first time in a long time that Dad has said something in a husband-type way rather than as someone who needs her help, and I wish I hadn’t been here. He used to say poetic things to Linda, too. Like “Anon there drops a tear…for the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden and the gleam of her golden hair” (Matthew Arnold).
“I would say no, Billy,” Mom says. “The universe doesn’t seem to be moving toward perfection. At least, I don’t see evidence that that’s happening. It’s just something people say when they’re desperate. Something they grab at when they’re drowning. I’m not sure those little sayings really work.”
“But Fritz thinks they do, right? And we’re back to Fritz again. I mean, he’s back up on the pedestal. He’s God now because Dad is getting better.”
“Fritz isn’t God. Can’t you get through a single conversation without wallowing in sarcasm? He’s just a regular person, but he seems to know what he’s doing. Don’t think of him as God. Think of him as a tool we can use, which is what that idiot Mieux is, and what they all are.”
I leave for school thinking of a line from “Desiderata”: “No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” At first it seemed like more of the same, but it really isn’t. It doesn’t say the world is headed for perfection or destruction, just that it is going in the direction it’s intended to go. Old Max Ehrmann was obviously hedging his bets there.